


Parapraxis

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Scene tag, just two boys from brooklyn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 15:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3902062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of <i>course</i> it just fucking slipped out. </p><p> </p><p>  <span class="small">Spoilers for <i>Avengers: Age of Ultron.</i></span></p>
            </blockquote>





	Parapraxis

**Author's Note:**

> Because if y'all had as much trouble with the way that damned "Language!" comment was contextualized (or more accurately: NOT contextualized) in AoU, you'll understand why I felt this was necessary.
> 
> Love to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad) for looking this over, and for joining me in a mid-conference (on my end) phone rant featuring just this maddening thing ;)

Of _course_ it just fucking slipped out. 

And there’s the rational part of his brain, the one that gets that they’re poking fun, that they’ll always believe what they want to believe and they’ll never quite understand who and what he is, what he’s always been: there’s the rational part of his brain that understands the way they won’t let it go. 

The pressure in his chest though, the one that won’t go away: that pressure just gets bigger. Tighter.

More like drowning.

So he smiles tight toward Tony, and looks down in that way people always mistake for bashfulness when Nat smirks; he shakes his head and sighs when the cycle completes, when they’ve all made a crack at his expense one way or another, because it’s easier to say nothing, to let them move on by way of assumption and never scratch the surface. 

Never guess the truth.

They’d been boys; babies, really. Steve’d needed a breather, and Bucky was used to that, Bucky’d learned to see it before Steve even had to start denying his own limitations to himself; so Steve’d needed a breather, as usual. And the Barnes’ new neighbor was a real proper lady from Atlanta, and she’d taught Bucky’s momma to make sweet tea just so, and sure, maybe Bucky’s momma’s version was more water, less tea, and even less sugar when things were real tight, when things got real bad, but it was cool on the tongue, down the throat, and it was soothing in Steve’s chest, and Bucky watched him with raven eyes: all glitter and edge but welled up in concern more than curiosity, even then.

From the very beginning.

And Bucky’s hand was already getting broader, was already spanning more space, because Steve knew the feel of it just below his shoulder, firm and wide and safe against Steve’s back like a magnet, drawing breath inexorable: anchoring Steve to the land of the waking, the living, the being here and now.

With Bucky. Always with Bucky.

He’d been too young to understand exactly what it meant, he knows that. But he knows just as strongly that, in his flimsy-failing heart, he was sure of what he had. He was sure that it was forever. That nothing else would ever match it, and that no one else could ever compare.

Whatever it was. Whatever it _meant_.

“ _Hell_ , Stevie,” Bucky had whispered, filling his glass with only a little tremor in his wrist; not enough to spill but enough to match the fear inside those high-shine eyes. “Them lungs o’ yours are rattlin’ around like a coupla right bastards, ain’t they?”

And Steve’d coughed violent-like, more for humor than anything else, and Bucky’d grinned all tooth and pillow-lips, and Steve loved to draw, and the shapes, the colors: they were fascinating.

 _Bucky_ was—

“James Buchanan Barnes!” Mrs. Barnes’ voice was shrill; Steve can still hear it now, not just in the back of his mind but full in the ring of his ears: “ _Language_!”

And they never did find out if it’d been a censure for the hell or for the bastard or for both, but Bucky’d looked amply contrite, and then some, and Steve’d hid his wide eyes, and his ever-wider grin, in the glass as he sipped his tea and tried to convince his lungs to breathe right, just this once; just this once with Bucky, who was near to him, who was his closest friend, who was the brightest spot of his young small world, and who was right, after all.

Steve’s lungs _were_ a coupla right bastards.

And Steve couldn’t tell you, now, how it all unfolded, how that became their catchphrase, their shared little joke out of all the things that might have suited as an alternative: how a disapproving glare and a put-upon shrillness took a place between _punk_ and _jerk_ and _don’t take all the stupid with you_ as they orbited one another ever-closer with each year that passed—Steve couldn’t tell you how it never failed to elicit the same reaction it did that first time, once Bucky’s momma’d left the room: laughter. Side-splitting, shoulder-shaking, unrepentant giggles. 

Unremitting _joy_.

When they’d got caught in the chapel when they were supposed to be in class, heads together to read one of Bucky’s pulps. When Steve caught the pneumonia and the priest came, scaring Bucky witless. When Bucky parted ways with his first steady dame. When Steve’s mom passed. After Pearl Harbor. 

When the draft notice came. When it was finally opened; when it couldn’t be ignored any longer.

_Language, young man!_

It sometimes took longer to manage it, and sometimes the laughter was silent, was all used up in shaping the ghost of a smile. Sometimes it was bigger, brighter, or less.

But it never failed.

It was _theirs_.

And it _had_ slipped out, after the serum, after Zola, after feeling the shape of Bucky’s shoulder under Steve’s near palms and remembering and learning and loving all at once, and never being surprised that they could all be real, and infinite, and aching, and true. They’d been together—it wasn’t the end of the line, _their_ line, thank _god_ —and there was a newness in the air between them, something unspoken and a bit like electricity, potentially dangerous, but not quite tense, but they were alive and Steve could look at Bucky and watch the lift of his chest as he breathed and he could think about sweet tea and how he’d dreamed, sometimes, of the taste of Bucky’s giggles: whether they’d be sweet, too, so it’s okay. It’s okay.

But the battle’s bloody, as too many of them are. And Bucky takes a hit for Dernier, abandons his position and his vantage point to save their asses, and the string of profanities he lets loose in the process is impressive, even for him; for them. Because Steve’d always had the sharper tongue, better to slice through the worst of words and phrases—but this.

This here’s a doozy and a half.

And it slips out, and the timing is terrible, and there are bodies everywhere, loss of life and Bucky’s own blood soaking through at his arm in a way that makes Steve’s heart pound and his mind’s not working, his heart’s just slamming, all fear, and maybe they are back in that kitchen, and maybe the taste of bile on the back of Steve’s tongue is the sweet tea of war: but hell. Bastard. And all the worst and rest.

“ _Language_ ,” Steve hisses, at Bucky’s side and gauging the damage to flesh, to life, to bone: minimal.

Bucky’s very still, though, and Steve thinks for a moment that maybe the something in the air was more dangerous than he thought, was soured: poisoned. His stomach starts to drop.

And then: it comes out like a bark, and Steve doesn’t have to wonder whether that’s the foxhole equivalent of bubbling cackles in that Brooklyn kitchen way back when; it starts with a bark and then it grows, and Steve’s hand tightens, tries to stay the blood that flows from Bucky’s wound because Bucky’s too lost, too overcome with laughter, and it’s every hint of what paradise means, it’s every glimpse of heaven that Steve thinks he’ll ever know.

And the others have turned away, and left the Captain and his Sergeant to all the quirks they still don’t understand, and Steve’s always had the sharper tongue, between them, but just now, he makes it smooth: he leans and he presses close and he licks into Bucky’s mouth where it waits for him, where it presses back and nips warm, and Bucky doesn’t taste like tea, and he’s not particularly sweet: earthy, almost. Salt of the earth. Blood of the universe.

So much _better_.

The leads have been fruitless thus far, of course. And there is a rational part of Steve’s brain that understands what that means, that can contextualize it logically rather than blowing it out of proportion, rather than buying new glasses solely for the purpose of breaking them; rather than lying in bed to the barrage of his own heavy pulse as all the possibilities, all the horrors imaginable filter through his head.

But he’d been doing alright. Sam’d sent him away, promised to keep watch, to be vigilant, to do Steve proud, and Steve knows Sam will do more than that; perhaps more than either of them had together, if Steve’s honest, now that Sam’s free of Steve’s frantic anxiety, his heartsick torment, his single-minded frenzy. So Steve had headed back to New York, back to Midtown, back to the Tower. To distractions. And they’d worked, some of the time. For a bit of time. And that was good. That was enough.

But then it’d goddamned _slipped_.

And he trusts his team; might even love the crazy idiots: but that word isn’t theirs; that history isn’t a thing that they’re privy too. The cracks marked in Steve’s heart, and the things that shine, that spill, that ooze out aren’t _for_ them.

They debrief. Steve barely registers Maria, Strucker, the staff, the science. Steve barely hears over Bucky’s voice in his head, every goddamn and hellfire shit-cunt and whatever other nonsense swear the man could twist together and make heads of.

They debrief, and Steve takes the elevator alone to his floor, strips his uniform, and grabs the tablet that he’s done his best not to touch thus far. To trust in Sam. To take the break he knows he needs.

But the tightness, the pressure: it’s overwhelming. He might split apart, he might shatter beneath its weight.

So he scans police blotters. Missing persons reports. Records of destruction beyond the norm, or conspiracy theorists sighting advanced beings with cybertronic limbs, and there will be nothing, Steve knows. He _knows_ , but it doesn’t stop him.

Because when Steve slips up again, he wants to taste the laughter that follows.

All sweet tea, and the salt of the earth.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/post/118488679877/fic-parapraxis-1-1), as ever.


End file.
